Dept. of Self Promotion

Now live on Washington City Paper‘s popular blog, City Desk, is my video interview with Manil Suri. Right: I’m learning. As I mentioned elsewhere, it’s a little frustrating to realize how much work is required to do something that winds up looking like a 5 a.m. public-affairs show in Schenectady. But Suri is a great conversationalist and was a great sport about the awkward filming setup (we recorded this in my office). More importantly, just by doing it, I figured out a ton of things that’ll make the next one go better. I didn’t get into journalism to do video–heck, I got into writing precisely to avoid that sort of thing–but with the journalism world what it is, everything is worth trying. And there’s a similar degree of satisfaction with recording something as with writing something–when it’s done, you’ve still done a Made Thing, and you’re still eager to get people to take a look at it.

Thanks for giving it a look. I like interviewing authors, and I like doing interviews in general–I’ve been doing it for about 12 years now. But it was nerve-wracking to do something in front of a camera, which I’d never done before. It’s awkward for me because I prefer to be conversational, and video requires being more call-and-response–here’s a question, here’s an answer.